The Chronicles of Boredom-Busting
by WhoNeedsReality
Summary: When Sarah and Emily are bored, and get onto to the wrong train at a School Trip, they don't expect to find themselves transported to another world, controlled entirely by Emily's magic book. They journey through great works of fiction, but with two cranky 13-year-olds, it's bound to be hilarious! Includes HP, Narnia, LotR, and many more. My first fic, so R&R!
1. Choo-Choo Train

All together, the whole Year 8 class standing on the grey platform looked like a field ready to harvest. Since our uniforms were almost entirely green, comparisons to shrubbery were frequent. It's remarkable, how thirteen-year-old girls can manage to sound talkative and cheerful almost anywhere. I mean, it was 2°C, frost caked the granite platform of Southwark Tube Station, and my friend Sarah and I were the only two in jackets. Everyone else stood in a large group, yelling to each other. Sarah and I were chafing our hands, trying to regain feeling in our red, itchy, fingers, whilst discussing how remarkably like a large field of braying cattle the rest of our year group looked.

Look, we weren't always that crabby, Sarah and I, but that day, we'd spent the better part of 2 hours on a bus without any of our other friends, all of whom were in different groups than us. Almost all the other girls were in the same form as each other, and that left Sarah and I, trying to entertain ourselves on her old iPod once our conversation died out.

Initially, we'd been excited about a trip to the Globe theatre- we were both Shakespeare fans- but we hadn't anticipated the long, boring bus ride, and the idea of a trip on the London tube with the same people who'd driven us witless on the bus was less than appealing.

"What I don't get," muttered Sarah trying desperately to warm her face, which was even worse than mine, red and cracking from both cold as well as eczema, "is why we not only got separated from our friends, but got stuck with the worst chaperones ever- I mean, come on, we even got the Vulture!"

The "Vulture," by the way, was what we had dubbed our cranky, child-hating, Geography teacher. The nickname was a little unfair though- Vultures didn't have skin that leathery. "I'd get it if was just me," Sarah continued, "all figures of even the remotest authority hate me- but you? Oh, right, the Vulture must've requested you 'cause she likes you, and then me because she wants me under permanent surveillance."  
"God, Sarah, shut up!" I shuffled my feet uncomfortably. Yeah, so I guess I'm a teacher's pet. I have the dubious honour of being the only student the Vulture's ever liked. Sarah, on the other hand, whilst undoubtedly intelligent and bright, is loathed by teachers for her outspokenness, tendency to be cheeky and talk back, the rarity with which her homework was turned in, and the incomprehensibly scruffy nature of her handwriting. Her relationship with the Vulture is almost as cordial as Hitler's was with Churchill.

"When will the flipping train arrive?" she sighed, exasperated.  
"God in heaven only knows," I sighed, and pulled a book out of my bag, then stuffed it quickly back in, guilty about leaving Sarah to her own devices. "I just wish something marginally interesting would happen," I grumbled, then pulled my coat tighter around me. We stood, shivering, in silence, for about three minutes and seventeen seconds. Seriously, what did those other girls find to talk about? Actually, why couldn't we find something to talk about? Usually, Sarah and I could never shut up. Today, however, conversation was stifled, by what I don't know. Whatever it was, I just wished something interesting would happen and my boredom would cease.

After another agonisingly tedious minute, the screeching, banshee-wail sound of a train pulling into a platform sliced through the air. Our hair was blown back, at ninety degrees from our necks, and the train made it's infamous "cat-playing-bagpipes-under-torture" noise whilst grinding to a halt.  
I turned to her in relief. "Come on," I hissed, "if we get on quickly, we might be able to snag the only seats not occupied by Blackberry-ogling businessmen!"  
"Not likely," Sarah muttered, but she followed me on nonetheless.

In hindsight, it should have worried me. The emptiness of the carriage. I mean, I'm a Londoner, and I know that at nine o'clock in the morning, at a major Tube Station, you're lucky to get breathing room on a train. A seat may come if you are either famous, one of God's chosen, or have sold your soul to Satan. An empty compartment? If you think you have a chance of getting one, you're clearly a foreigner. But that day, I was just too bored, tired and relieved to think of this. Sarah and I lapsed into our usual, easy conversation, actually enjoying ourselves, until we heard the hiss of the doors shutting. And we were still alone in the compartment.

"Oh lord, no," Sarah cried, turning to me in panic, "what do we do?"  
I felt nauseous with worry. "We're on the wrong train," I exclaimed.  
"I realised that, Einstein!" She was hyperventilating now. "Come on, Emily, what do we do?"  
I turned to the door we'd entered from, desperately punching the emergency open button. I felt slightly claustrophobic, despite the fact there was ample room in the carriage. Glancing through the window, I could see that nobody had noticed our absence. A loud hammering noise made me turn around abruptly. Sarah was banging on the other set of doors, using her overstuffed rucksack as a sort of battering ram.

"Sarah, no," I cried, "that's the wrong set of doors, they open to the-"  
But before I could finish my sentence, the doors gave way, and a blinding flash of light appeared. Sarah teetered dangerously on the edge of doorway. For a second, I thought she would regain her balance, and I leaned forward to haul her back in. Then she slipped forwards, into the light, and I could see her no more.

Before I continue, I should explain something about the way the London Trains work. In each carriage there are sets of doors on either side, used depending on which way the train is going. One side opens to the actual platform, the other opens to thin, grey mini-platform that separates the different sets of tracks from each other. You're never meant to be able to get through those, but they aren't designed to withstand attacks by half-crazed schoolgirls, and it was through these doors that my friend had just disappeared.

This left me with two options: either go the correct way back to our class and tell someone, or follow Sarah. I thought about the latter. Would she do the same for me? Er, no. Is it safe? I glanced at the door. The blinding flash was now a large rectangle of pulsating yellow light that filled the doorway. No, not safe. I turned to leave through the other door, but the sight of our irritating classmates froze me. I asked myself a final question: Does cool logic and rational thinking outweigh your own sanity? One thing was certain- walk through the other door, and I was pretty certain I'd never complain about boredom again.

Sighing, already regretting my decision, but somehow unable to stop myself, I stepped into the light.


	2. The Lion, The Witch and The Weird

Don't ask me what I expected to find through the door, because I don't know, but this was certainly not it. By "this", I mean a forest of snow-covered pine trees that shone opalescent in the sunlight that dappled them, a victorian-style lamppost iced with frost, and Sarah sat on the ground beneath the lamppost, shivering, staring at a nearby moss-encrusted cave in silence, but apparently calmed down. She stood up when she saw me. I marched over to her, and started yelling, fast and garbled. "SARAH JANE SMITH WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?" I glared at her for a moment before continuing. "In the space of about two minutes, you have defaced a train- City of London property!- stepped into what could be a tear in the fabric of space and time, and dragged me with you!"

She watched me calmly. "I didn't drag you with me," she replied, "and getting on the train was your idea. And anyway, I can't take you seriously when you yell at me, you're a head shorter than me!"  
"Whatever, Goliath, we're in this predicament thanks to you!"  
She gave me a long, pained look. "Seriously, Emily," she sighed, "who uses the word 'predicament' in 21st Century speech?"  
I'd like to say I responded to that well. Honestly, though, I punched her in the stomach. Then I exhaled, calming myself down. "What we've got to do first is work out where we are."  
Sarah nodded, rubbing her stomach. "We'd better take an inventory of our surroundings."  
"Do your stuff, Sacragewea." I've called her that ever since her mother forced her to join Girl Scouts.  
She started looking round and listing watch she saw. "Trees, snow, lamppost, more trees, and-"  
"Stop!" I had suddenly had the biggest epiphany of my life. Sarah turned to look at me, frowning.  
"What?" she asked.  
"Do. You. Know. Where. We. Are."  
She rolled her eyes. "No. I. Don't. We've. Already. Established. That."  
I ignored her mockery and seized her arm in excitement. "Can't you see?" I cried, passionately, "We're in Narnia!"  
"I knew it," Sarah was shaking her head sadly, "you've finally lost it. You've finally cracked."  
"Shut up and look. We've all read 'The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe,' and this is exactly how it was described! There's the lamppost, look!"  
"Two things, genius, firstly, that's impossible-"  
"That's exactly what Peter and Susan said in the movie, and look at them!"  
"Movie being the operative. And anyway, we didn't get in through a wardrobe, we got in through a train!"  
"Ah ha!" I was exultant with the triumphant nature of my answer. "They get in through a train in 'Prince Caspian', so-" Oh lord. I blanched.  
Sarah suddenly looked concerned. "What's wrong?"  
Fingers trembling, I unzipped my bag, and drew out my book. The cover was emblazoned: "The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian."


	3. My Precious

Sarah was still rocking back and forth with her head between her knees after 10 minutes. "It's impossible," she would cry to the heavens, "it defies the laws of physics!" She does so love her physics.

"I have an idea," I told my friend, soothingly, "we got into Narnia the same way the kids got in in the book, right?"  
She stared up at me, eyes hard and bloodshot. "Yeah..."  
"So we just use the book as a guide to see what happens until we get out again!"  
Sarah seemed mildly placated by the restoration of some form of logic and stood up. We flipped through the first few chapters of the book, and tried to understand how to proceed. The kids in the book had a magic dwarf to help them, and we eventually conceded that we weren't going to get that kind of help, so we decided to try improvise and went on our way.

Then we made our way easily around Narnia, frolicked with some fauns, and arrived back safe and sound, the end. Ha, no.

We walked for about ten minutes in a direction Sarah assured me was North, until she stopped abruptly. I followed her line of sight, curiously. Oh. The cold hard hand of dread clenched its cruel fingers around my rapidly beating heart. There, towering in front of us, was a very large, very active-  
"Volcano," she squeaked.  
"Oh dear lord," my breath was getting ragged, and I could feel sweat dripping down the nape of my neck, "there's a real, live volcano. In Narnia. NARNIA!"  
"How do we know if it is Narnia," Sarah asked, the hysteria in her voice mounting steadily, "if there's a dirty great volcano in it?"  
"I don't know, it's not in any of the books!" I was having a minor panic attack.  
"Check," choked Sarah, her voice tight.  
"But it-"  
"Just check!"

I was pretty sure it would be futile, but I reached into my bag, trying to work out how likely it was that C.S Lewis thought that adding a volcano into his series was an issue so pressing that he came back from the dead, found my particular copy of "Prince Caspian," amended it, and disappeared, all without us noticing. It was as I was reluctantly coming to the conclusion that this was improbable that my hand pulled out the book- yet it wasn't the book.

It was a book, yes, but it was thicker, and heavier. I didn't see the title, however, as from between the pages slipped a large, gold ring. I cradled it in my hand. "So shiny," I whispered, "so pretty..."  
"Emily?" Sarah was leaning over my shoulder, sounding nervous. She wants it, I thought, she wants my lovely precious. She wants it for herself-ses.  
"NO," I screamed, "NOT MY PRECIOUS!" I swung my arm, trying to hit her face, but she's a lacrosse goalie, and has sharp reflexes- she caught my arm before it reached her, and wrenched my precious ring from my hands. She started running, as fast as she could- which is a lot faster than me- away from the volcano. I couldn't let her escape with my precious!  
"EVIL!" I cried, and launched myself onto her back. One of my arms snaked around her throat, trying to strangle her, and my other grappled desperately with her hands for my poor, dear ring.  
"Gerrof. Me!" Sarah rasped.  
"Never," I screamed, "not until you gives us precious!"  
Sarah kept running, and I kept grappling. She halted abruptly when were about two-hundred meters from the volcano, and turned around. Her face was red, and she struggled to breathe. Excellent. If she keeled over and died, precious would be mine! Sarah wrenched her right arm from my tenacious grasp, and raised it in the air. She swung it forward, and hurled my beautiful, my only, my precious, high into the air. It arced away from me, and somehow, impossibly, landed inside the volcano. I felt it as precious died. "NO!" I screeched "PRECIOUS!"  
Sarah shook me off her back, and snatched the book from me. Unceremoniously, she whacked me round the head with it.

"Ouch," I rubbed the spot where she'd hit me. I suddenly felt as though I had magically recovered from a bout of amnesia. "Oh dear god-in-heaven," I moaned, "it wasn't 'Lord of the Rings,' was it? Tell me I wasn't-"  
"It was 'Lord of the Rings,' Sarah confirmed, grimly, "that was Mount Doom, and you, Madam, were Gollum."  
"It cannot be," I whimpered, "I should've been Legolas! Or at least a hobbit! A hobbit!"  
Sarah scowled, and rubbed her neck. "Let's go, idiot, before the volcano goes and explodes and really makes my day!"  
Actually, I did recall that in the book, Mount Doom had erupted, but I didn't think Sarah was in the mood to hear it.


	4. The Wonderful Wizard of Death

The next hour was almost as eventful as the school's infamous Christmas fundraiser of 2009. We got thrown off a boat by Captain Hook, fell down a rabbit hole and evaded a temperamental playing-card queen, Sarah got stuck in Aladdin's genie's lamp, I had to get Robinson Crusoe off his Island, we ran into Percy Jackson, and also got to knock the heads of Edward Cullen and Bella Swan together (I'm not sure if this was strictly necessary, but you don't pass up an opportunity like that). As for the book, it established itself as a shapeshifter, and metamorphosed more times than Lady Gaga has outfits.

We had just narrowly avoided getting shot by an arrow in the Hunger Games, when Sarah spoke: "We've got to get out of here."  
I rolled my eyes. "No, really Sherlock?"  
"No- here!" She pointed ahead.  
I turned to look- then wished I hadn't. A grotesque, ghost-like figure was approaching us. He was cloaked. He was as pale as bone. He had about as much hair on his head as Humpty-Dumpty. It was terrible to behold. Most horrible of all, however- he had no nose.  
"Voldemort," I whispered.  
"Don't say the name!" Sarah hissed, but it was too late. His head twisted to face us with an audible snap, and he came towards us. We were paralysed with fear, too terrified to move. In what seemed like years, he reached us. And I recognised his expression from every movie. It was the one of cold, cruel ecstasy that he wore before raising his wand to kill. It clearly meant death.  
***

Look, I'm not sure how to justify what I did then. I can only say that the Harry Potter fan inside me awakened, and a golden opportunity presented itself to me. I snapped a twig off a tree, and strode towards the most dangerous dark wizard of all time, one who shouldn't even be real, brandishing nothing but a pretend (not to my mind, though) wand.

If you really want to know, the next display of my boundless brilliance was to wave the stick in his face, shouting "STUPEFY! EXPELLIARMUS! PROTEGO!" until I ran out of spells.  
"Put the wand down, dear, at least die with dignity," hissed Sarah, "you're only embarrassing yourself."

However, something in my 'strategy' must've worked, because The Dark Lord faltered before drawing his wand, in awe of my sheer stupidity. It was this faltering that saved us, because before he had time to curse us, a piercing noise tore through the air. It was, at that moment, music to my ears, that sound of "cat-playing-bagpipes-under-torture". The white-and-red London train flattened the evil wizard and opened it's doors.


	5. The End Of Everything

"I still don't believe it! It's impossible," Sarah sank into the seat, pouting petulantly. In case you were wondering, she wasn't talking about the fact that we'd ended up travelling through most of the world's most famous works of fiction and were alive. Or the fact that the passengers had failed to notice their train tearing through another dimension. Not even the fact that no time had passed in the real world whilst we were away. She was sulking about the fact that none of the chattering girls and glowering teachers around us had noticed our absence. "I mean come on," she wailed, "we're indispensable members of the school. I rolled my eyes, and reached apprehensively for my book- I know that, all things considered, this may have been a thick idea, but I was curios, okay? I frowned. It felt too hard and flat to be a book. I drew it out.

Oh. It was a DVD box. I glanced at the title. "Sarah," I called to her, "how'd you feel about swimming?" Across the top of the box, in white, was a single word: "Titanic." I waved the box at Sarah. She glowered back. I was pretty sure my boring afternoon had ended permanently.


End file.
